On which I write about the books I read, science, science fiction, fantasy, and anything else that I want to. Currently trying to read and comment upon every novel that has won the Hugo and International Fantasy awards.

Monday, June 30, 2014

There is something ethereal about every song sung by Stevie Nicks. Obviously, her voice gives just about any song she sings an otherworldly quality, but I think it is her lyrics that seem to call the listener into fairy-land. And the fairy-land that Nicks calls the listener to in this case is her own past, when she was a poor, struggling musician who slept on a mattress on the floor with nothing but paper flowers for decoration. I think anyone who has ever felt distanced from themselves, or anyone who has ever had to start over can relate to these lyrics full of bittersweet nostalgia.

Saturday, June 28, 2014

Comments: Continuing her parade through the 2014 awards, Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice found a place on list of nominees for the Best First Novel. The only real surprise is that Leckie's book doesn't appear on the short list of nominees for the Best Science Fiction Novel as well (although it did find a place on the long list). On the other hand, despite their loud claims about their alleged popularity, none of the members of the so-called "sad puppy" slate that caused some small controversy in the Hugo Award nominations were able to find a place on this ballot - even on the long list - which is interesting given that the Locus Awards are, in large part, little more than a popularity contest. This isn't dispositive evidence, but it is strong evidence that the works on the "sad puppy" ballot weren't being excluded from venues like the Hugo Awards because of some conspiracy against the authors, but rather because the works they wrote simply weren't particularly good.

Other Nominees:
2. NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
3. The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch
4. River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay
5. Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
6. The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
7. Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett
8. Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson
9. The Land Across by Gene Wolfe
10. London Falling by Paul Cornell
11. Joyland by Stephen King
12. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
13. Blood Oranges by Kathleen Tierney
14. The Tyrant's Law by Daniel Abraham
15. Cold Steel by Kate Elliott
16. Necessary Evil by Ian Tregillis
17. The Aylesford Skull by James P. Blaylock
18. The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar
19. Anno Dracula 1976-1991: Johnny Alucard by Kim Newman
20. American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett
21. The Year of the Ladybird by Graham Joyce
22. The Scrivener's Tale by Fiona McIntosh
23. Between Two Thorns by Emma Newman
24. The Village Sang to the Sea: A Memoir of Magic by Bruce McAllister
25. Dead Set by Richard Kadrey

Other Nominees:
2. The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
3. A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar
4. The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker
5. The Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney
6. The Scroll of Years by Chris Willrich
7. Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins
8. The Age of Ice by J.M. Sidorova
9. A Questionable Shape by Bennett Sims

3. The Princess and the Queen by George R.R. Martin
4. Black Helicopters by Caitlín R. Kiernan
5. Precious Mental by Robert Reed
6. Rock of Ages by Jay Lake
7. The Queen of Eyes by Rachel Pollack
8. Feral Moon by Alexander Jablokov
9. Iseul's Lexicon by Yoon Ha Lee
10. The Weight of the Sunrise by Vylar Kaftan
11. Spin by Nina Allan
12. The Home for Broken Dolls by Kirstyn McDermott
13. The Mummy's Heart by Norman Partridge

5. A Terror by Jeffrey Ford
6. A Hollow Play by Amal El-Mohtar
7. The Litigation Master and the Monkey King by Ken Liu
8. Jaws of Saturn by Laird Barron
9. The Sun and I by K.J. Parker
10. Zero for Conduct by Greg Egan
11. Kormak the Lucky by Eleanor Arnason
12. The Unwanted Women of Surrey by Kaaron Warren
13. Paranormal Romance by Christopher Barzak
14. The Queen of the Night's Aria by Ian McDonald
15. We Three Kids by Margo Lanagan
16. The Ugly Duckling by Matthew Hughes
17. The Wreck of the Mars Adventure by David D. Levine
18. The Christmas Show by Pat Cadigan
19. A Window or a Small Box by Jedediah Berry
20. The Effigy Engine: A Tale of the Red Hats by Scott Lynch
21. The Book Seller by Lavie Tidhar
22. The Good Husband by Nathan Ballingrud
23. The Discovered Country by Ian R. MacLeod
24. Phosphorus by Veronica Schanoes
25. Painted Birds and Shivered Bones by Kat Howard
26. Grizzled Veterans of Many and Much by Robert Reed
27. Atmosphaera Incognita by Neal Stephenson
28. Watching the Cow by Alex Irvine
29. Chalk by Pat Cadigan
30. The Dragonslayer of Merebarton by K.J. Parker
31. Entangled by Ian R. MacLeod
32. And Then Some by Matthew Hughes
33. No Others are Genuine by Gregory Frost
34. The Irish Astronaut by Val Nolan
35. The Same Deep Waters as You by Brian Hodges

3. A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel by Ken Liu
4. The Science of Herself by Karen Joy Fowler
5. The Dead Sea-Bottom Scrolls by Howard Waldrop
6. Among Us by Robert Reed
7. The She-Wolf's Hidden Grin by Michael Swanwick
8. Uncaged by Gene Wolfe

13. Effigy Nights by Yoon Ha Lee
14. The Fairy Enterprise by Jeffrey Ford
15. The Sounds of Old Earth by Matthew Kressel
16. The Wildfires of Antarctica by Alan DeNiro
17. Ilse, Who Saw Clearly by E. Lily Yu
18. Sing by Karin Tidbeck
19. Pathways by Nancy Kress
20. The Promise of Space by James Patrick Kelly
21. The Master Conjurer by Charlie Jane Anders
22. Estella Saves the Village by Theodora Goss
23. Soulcatcher by James Patrick Kelly
24. Fire Above, Fire Below by Garth Nix
25. The Beasts We Want to Be by Sam J. Miller
26. The Bees Her Heart, the Hive Her Belly by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

3. The Bread We Eat in Dreams by Catherynne M. Valente
4. Kabu Kabu by Nnedi Okorafor
5. The Ape's Wife and Other Stories by Caitlín R. Kiernan
6. Conservation of Shadows by Yoon Ha Lee
7. Horse of a Different Color by Howard Waldrop
8. The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All and Other Stories by Laird Barron

9. The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson, Volume 5: The Door to Anywhere by Poul Anderson

10. Five Autobiographies and a Fiction by Lucius Shepard

11. The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Eight: Hot Times in Magma City by Robert Silverberg

12. Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell

13. A Very British History: The Best Science Fiction Stories of Paul McAuley by Paul J. McAuley

14. How the World Became Quiet by Rachel Swirsky
15. North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud
16. Magic Highways: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Three by Jack Vance
17. Beyond the Rift by Peter Watts
18. Before and Afterlives by Christopher Barzak
19. The Greatship by Robert Reed
20. Space Is Just a Starry Night by Tanith Lee
21. Good-Bye, Robinson Crusoe and Other Stories by John Varley
22. Adam Robots by Adam Roberts
23. Antiquities and Tangibles and Other Stories by Tim Pratt
24. Trafalgar by Angelica Gorodischer
25. The Very Best of Barry N. Malzberg by Barry N. Malzberg
26. Caution: Contains Small Parts by Kirstyn McDermott

27. Snodgrass and Other Illusions: The Best Short Stories of Ian R. MacLeod by Ian R. MacLeod

3. Queen Victoria's Book of Spells edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
4. The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven edited by Jonathan Strahan
5. Unnatural Creatures edited by Neil Gaiman and Maria Dahvana Headley
6. Fearsome Journeys: The New Solaris Book of Fantasy edited by Jonathan Strahan
7. The Other Half of the Sky edited by Athena Andreadis and Kay Holt
8. The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Five edited by Ellen Datlow

Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.

This week RAnn of This That and the Other Thing asks (via Billy): Do you follow a lot of blogs but rarely read them or do you follow a few you read regularly?

Sadly, I don't read other blogs nearly as often as I would like to. The truth is that after the time spent at my day job and the time needed to consume media and render it into written content for this blog, I don't have all that much time left over to spend reading blogs. There just aren't enough hours in the day to get done everything that I'd like to get done, and something has to fall by the wayside. Unfortunately, one of the things that I am generally forced to give up is spending a lot of time reading other blogs.

Friday, June 27, 2014

It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.

Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.

Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".

If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.

If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!

If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: Post a photo of your favorite coffee mug (or mugs if you can’t choose just one).

I don't drink coffee or tea, so I don't have any mugs. Instead, here are some of my drinking glasses.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Downbound Train is a song about a life that has turned into a disaster. I've felt the way the character narrating the song feels a time or two, but I don't think I've ever had my own life go as awry as his has. But as bad as it seems it would be to experience this kind of downward spiral yourself, it seems to me that it is worse to watch someone you know have this happen to them and be unable to do anything that will help change their trajectory.

And it is even more depressing when the person in this downward spiral is a teenager who doesn't even realize that they are headed in a self-destructive direction, and won't listen when you try to tell them that the path they are on will result in the loss of everything they have ever dreamed for their life. And the only thing you can do is sit by and watch as the collapse they don't see coming consumes them.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.

This week Becca of BS Book Reviewers asks (via Billy): Do you prefer Nook, Kindle, other reader, or paper book?
Not only do I prefer paper books, I almost exclusively read paper books. The redhead has a Kindle that she uses to do a lot of her reading, and she also has an iPad which she sometimes used for reading before she got the Kindle. I have a small number of books on the redhead's Kindle, but I haven't ever actually completed a book on an e-reader. I don't have any kind of philosophical objection to e-books, I'm just not particularly comfortable reading books in that format.

Friday, June 20, 2014

It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.

Follow the two Featured Bloggers of the week - Not Yet Identified and I Have No Idea.

Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.

Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.

Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".

If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.

If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!

If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: What are your favorite books of 2014 so far?

My two favorite books of 2014 so far are Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, and K. Makansi's The Sowing. Both are science fiction books set in worlds that most people would consider dystopic to a certain extent, although most of the characters who live in the world of Ancillary Justice would not see it as such. Both books are excellent, although the two are quite different in many ways. I should have reviews posted for both of these books some time in the next week.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

I am a supporting member of Loncon 3, which is the location of this year's World Science Fiction Convention. Because of this, I was eligible to vote in this year's Hugo Awards. This is the first in what I intend to be multiple posts in which I set forth how I voted in the various categories in which I am voting, and explain why I made these choices.

The first category I am posting is the Best Fancast category. After winning the Hugo two years in a row, the members of the SF Squeecast declared themselves ineligible for the award, and as a result none of the nominees in 2014 have won the award before. I listened to at least four or five recent episodes all of the nominated podcasts in preparation for voting. In some cases, I have listened to many more episodes. I think this is a sufficient number of episodes to get a feel for the quality of each of these podcasts. Without further ado, here is how I ranked the nominated podcasts:

1. Galactic Suburbia Podcast (actual finish 3rd): Hosted by Alisa, Alex, and Tansy, Galactic Suburbia is by far the best podcast nominated for the Hugo award. The episodes generally follow a standard format that start with a general discussion about recent events in the genre fiction world, followed by a recap of the "culture consumed" by each host since the last installment of the show. These segments are interlaced with comments concerning the lives of the hosts, feminism, other issues related to science fiction and fantasy, and, of course, cake. The best part of the podcast is the fast-paced, insightful, witty, and humorous nature of the round table discussion that gives the whole podcast an energy that is simply lacking in any of its competitors.

2. Doctor Who: Verity! (actual finish 6th): The gap between the Galactic Suburbia podcast and the Verity podcast is quite large. If the rules allowed me to rank Verity as my third or fourth choice without putting anyone in between it and Galactic Suburbia (and without ranking "No Award" in between the two), I would. In short, every podcast from here down is simply not nearly as good as Galactic Suburbia. That is not to say that Verity doesn't have its merits. For one thing, there is some cast crossover with Galactic Suburbia, which is a plus. And on the whole the hosts of the show are interesting speakers, and keep the discussions flowing. But the drawback of the podcast is that it is entirely Dr. Who focused. This isn't a bad thing necessarily, I am a long time Dr. Who fan, but what it does mean is that when the show is on hiatus between seasons, as it is now, the cast is left with topics such as discussing novel adaptations and recounting the influence of decades old books analyzing the series upon their personal development as fans of the show. To put it bluntly, despite an engaging cast, the extremely narrow focus of the podcast hampers it somewhat, and pushes it out of first place.

3. The Coode Street Podcast (actual finish 2nd): Hosted by Gary Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan, the Coode Street Podcast is a general science fiction show. Overall it is fairly interesting, with the only caveat being that it can drag a little bit. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of podcasts really ought to have a harsher editor who will take their hour long episodes and trim them down by a fair amount. Because nothing kills my interest in a podcast than long, drawn-out episodes on a single topic. On the plus side, this allows Wolfe and Strahan to go into a lot of depth on the topics they discuss and the people they interview, but this also makes for very long and tiring experience as the hosts tend to ramble and wander a fair amount. The irony of the Coode Street Podcast is that the material presented in the shows would be interesting, but the way it is presented often makes it decidedly not so.

4. The Writer and the Critic (actual finish 7th): Everything that was said about The Coode Street Podcast applies to The Writer and the Critic, only more so. Both Kirstyn and Ian are quite knowledgeable about genre fiction, which allows them to delve quite deeply into the topics they cover. The problem is that the show is very slow and its episodes clock in at about an hour and a half, making for an almost tedious experience.

5. Tea and Jeopardy (actual finish 4th): This show is essentially an interview show in which the host Emma Newman sits down and has a conversation with guests, usually science fiction or fantasy authors. I'm not a huge fan of interview shows, even on podcasts that I normally enjoy, and the fact that this is basically the entire format for this show is a major strike against it in my book. Someone who likes lots of interview episodes would probably have a different opinion of the podcast, but I don't like interview episodes, and as a result, Tea and Jeopardy gets a fairly low ranking from me.

6. SF Signal Podcast (actual finish 1st): There's nothing particularly wrong with the SF Signal Podcast, but there isn't anything particularly notable about it either. There is also another wide gulf in quality between Tea and Jeopardy, and the SF Signal Podcast. The primary problem with the podcast is that Patrick Hester is simply dull and uninteresting as a host. Even though the podcast frequently gets interesting authors as interview subjects, and can have some interesting people on their panel shows, the show is continually dragged down to tedium by Hester, who is not nearly as interesting or humorous as he seems to think he is. This podcast isn't bad, but there's no real reason to bother to listen to it either.

7. No Award (actual finish 8th): If none of the podcasts listed above win the Hugo in this category I'd rather see no award granted because, for rather obvious reasons, I don't think the remaining podcast should win the award.

8. The Skiffy and Fanty Show (actual finish 5th): This podcast is, in a word, unlistenable. I have sat through several episodes, and each one was worse than the last. The podcast is slow, dull, and disorganized. The hosts are tedious and unfunny. I've listened to interviews, panel shows, and one attempt at a sketch show in which one cast member attempted to speak while doing a Sean Connery impersonation and all were simply atrocious. The episodes were all uniformly awful. This show, quite simply, has no business being on a Hugo ballot. I'll probably leave this entry off of my voting ballot entirely, and if I rank it, it will be below "No Award".

Full review: Before I had read a single fantasy story, before I even really knew what science fiction was, before I had ever rolled a single die in a role-playing game, there was Prince Valiant. From the time I was old enough to read and knew what the Sunday comics in newspapers were, I would look forward to being transported to King Arthur's court to follow the adventures of Prince Valiant of Thule as we waded through anachronistic enemies, won the hand of Aleta of the Misty Isles, and wielded the Singing Sword to bring his particular brand of hack and slash justice to the world. Far from Camelot reprints strips of the Sunday comic that appeared between 2004 and 2008, long after my formative years of religiously reading it, but they capture the same history-be-damned pulpy chain mail and flashing swords adventure that I fell in love with when I was six.

The book opens with Prince Valiant, now serving along with his wife Queen Aleta as regents of England following Arthur's abdication, chafing at the idleness of courtly life. After a brief set of strips in which Valiant takes out his frustrations on those around him, he is encouraged to take his son Nathan as his squire and head out into the country in search of adventure. From there four lengthy stories ensue, one after another, as Valiant ventures further and further away from his home in Camelot. First Valiant befriends a Pict named Borgut who convinces him to head north to deal with dragons that are plaguing Borgut's village. After some adventure, intrigue, treachery, and something of a love interest for Nathan, Valiant and his squire charter passage back to Camelot. Of course, as this is Prince Valiant, their journey home is interrupted by some anachronistic Norse raiders, and Valiant is taken prisoner.

The stories are told in a fairly boisterously implausible style, with Valiant doing manly things and dealing with manly men. The Norse captain Skyrmir humiliates Valiant until Valiant manages to disable him, resulting in his replacement as captain by the even more ruthless Thornwolf. After sailing to Iberia, the Norse crew finds a mysterious tower and learn of a forgotten Carthaginian treasure that turns out to be King Solomon's gold. After adventures involving the hoards otherworldly guardian, Valiant and Skyrmir escape, establish the sort of macho friendship that results when two men beat each other over the head for a while, only to stumble across and rescue an African princess named Makeda. Meanwhile Nathan finds Gawain, who takes him back to Camelot where he can report Valiant's capture to Aleta.

And so the story winds on as Valiant finds himself drawn into a quest to return King Solomon's gold to its African guardians in the city of Ab'Saba, and Aleta sets out to rescue the husband she thinks is still the prisoner of Norse pirates. Instead of trying to return home to his wife and children, Valiant decided that once he was free of his pseudo-Viking captors he would work his way south along the African coast. And so Valiant's adventures continue until he finds himself in the middle of a Ab'Saban civil war, where, serendipitously, Aleta's expedition happens to show up to tie the story up in a neat little bow.

For anyone who has ever read Prince Valiant in the Sunday papers, there isn't really anything in this volume that should be surprising. The artwork is done in the usual realistic style, the text is placed in little boxes - the Valiant strip has never used speech bubbles. The stories are, as one would expect, filled with villains who are at turns nefarious, duplicitous, and jovial, and monsters that are sometimes implausible, and sometimes merely beastly. Throughout, Valiant perseveres with the kind of swashbuckling bravado that only works in the particular kind of comic strip that he lives in, but it is a kind of swashbuckling bravado that is entertaining as well. Readers who don't enjoy Arthurian epic heroism won't get much out of this book. Those who do, on the other hand, will certainly find this to be an enjoyable and exciting read.

Monday, June 16, 2014

This Musical Monday selection is a little bit of an inside reference, so I'll explain. This past weekend, during a game of Cards Against Humanity, one proposed replacement for currency was AXE Body Spray, which immediately prompted the singing of a few lines from this song. This surprised no one in my gaming group, as any use of the AXE Body Spray card does that. And now it will do so in your gaming group too.

So just sit back and enjoy as Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome mix references to Truman Capote, Jim Croce, Golda Meir, and Margaret Sanger into lyrics about guys who groom their beards into Bonsai tree shapes, pay a thousand dollars for a bottle of vodka, and yes, wear a lot of AXE Body Spray.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.

This week Elizabeth of Silver's reviews asks (via Billy): Do you think your blog reflects your personality? Does it show organization, a care-free style, or some other trait?

Given that I write every post that appears on this blog, I'm pretty sure that it reflects my personality. as a rule I don't have any guest posts, nor do I have any co-bloggers. I picked out all of the themes and made all of the formatting decisions, so in addition to the content of the blog being generated by me, the look and feel of the blog is the result of my decisions.

However, I think the element of the blog that most reflects my personality is the lists. I love lists, and I love checking things off of lists. In large part, this blog exists for me to make lists of books, television, and movies and then fill those lists in after I read or watch them and then write a review for each. I try to catalogue everything that is posted here. I have a list of all the authors I that have written works or parts of works that I have reviewed, well, a partially completed list that I am still working on. I have a list of all the books I've reviewed. I have lists of all the magazine issues I have reviewed, a list of all the television episodes I've reviewed, and a list of all the movies I've reviewed. I have a page where I have listed all of the books that are part of a series. And I have made dozens of lists of genre award winners and nominees. And eventually I will fill them all in with reviews.

Friday, June 13, 2014

It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.

Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.

Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".

If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.

If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!

If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: Armchair Travel! Tell us about your favorite book in a setting you’d like to visit (a real place for this question).

Mars. I'd like to go to Mars. I don't really care which fictional account of Mars might be referenced: The Mars described in Clarke's The Sands of Mars, or the Mars described in Asimov's David Starr. Space Ranger or The Martian Way, or the Mars described in Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, or the Mars described in Heinlein's Red Planet would all be fine, although all are probably wildly inaccurate as they were based upon what we now know to be an incomplete, and therefore faulty, understanding of the planet.

Of one could go based upon Robinson's Martian trilogy of Red Mars, Blue Mars, and Green Mars. Or based on Ben Bova's book Mars. Those would be generally more accurate, and no less enticing than the fictional versions of earlier writers. Because no matter what fictional version of Mars you use as a jumping off point, the actual Mars remains endlessly fascinating to me. It has polar caps. It has Olympus Mons, a mountain that dwarfs those on Earth. It has an enormous canyon that makes the Grand Canyon look like a tiny scratch in the ground. It may have harbored life at one point, and may still do so. Granted, it is almost certainly microbial life if it is there, but any life that isn't life from Earth would revolutionize the entire field of biology. And those are just the highlights. Mars is a place we could live. A place we could terraform and make into a new home.

I think I should note that my second choice was Jupiter and its moons (or Saturn and its moons) as presented by Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two. Or possibly Titan, as it exists in Clarke's Imperial Earth. Growing up in the shadow of the Apollo landings, and coming of age during the time that the Viking landers were touching down on Mars and the Voyager probes were sending us close up pictures of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, my love of these places far from Earth seems to me to have been almost inevitable. And at the time, I was certain we would get there. After all, during the first decade of my life we sent six missions to the Moon. In 1980, it seemed like the next step would be establishing a permanent base there and then sending men to Mars and the outer planets. But now, nearly forty-five years later, we are less capable of putting men into space than we were when I was a teenager. And that makes me both angry and sad. We used to have expansive dreams, and throughout my life our dreams have receded and become small.

And finally, for anyone wondering what xkcd 162 is, here you go:

And you can find the rest of xkcd here. At least the author of xkcd still dreams of big things. Even if we can't do them any more.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Short review: Franz Ferdinand evades Gavrilo Princip and World War I never happens. From there, the author envisions two very different worlds in extreme detail.

Haiku
Franz Ferdinand lives
World War I is averted
And two worlds ensue

Disclosure: I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Some people think this may bias a reviewer so I am making sure to put this information up front. I don't think it biases my reviews, but I'll let others be the judge of that.

Full review:Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives! imagines a world in which the titular archduke and his spouse manage to avoid being killed by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. From there, Lebow posits that World War I could have been avoided, resulting in a posited pair of alternative histories, one alleged to be "better", and one described as "worse". Unfortunately, Lebow's hypothesized counterfactuals are poorly supported, tediously overlong, and ultimately unconvincing.

In the opening pages of the book, Lebow discusses the primary point of departure from history that he envisions - Archduke Franz Ferdinand's motorcade does not take a wrong turn, does not pass near where Princep lay in wait, and the Archduke doesn't die with a bullet in his neck. This, Lebow contends, would be sufficient to avert World War I, asserting that without this one incident, the great powers of Europe would behave reasonably and rationally, and, if no similar trigger occurred by 1919 or so, everyone would realize that peace was in their national interest and give up war permanently. This assessment seems, at best, overly optimistic. Even if the provocation of Ferdinand's assassination not happened, the powers of Europe were poised for war, harboring ambitions and grievances that probably would have put them on a collision course.

Lebow contends that it would not have been in the best interests of the European powers to fight a war, but nations often do not act rationally. Germany was hungry for the prestige that came with colonies. That, and Kaiser Wilhelm's obsession with naval power, put Germany on a collision course with Britain. France was still seething over the loss of Alsace-Lorraine forty years earlier, and Austro-Hungary itself had been willing to precipitate an international crisis that almost resulted in war as recently as 1908 when it annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina. Italy had territorial ambitions in land that was controlled by Austro-Hungary, and Russia was a dangerous combination of apparently powerful and self-consciously insecure, politically positioned in such a way that it had to respond to almost any provocation to maintain its status as a great power. But Lebow dismisses this and all of the other intertwined tensions with little more than a hand wave.

And this reveals what is essentially the weakness that runs through the book. Lebow takes complex situations and then uses simplistic and reductive assertions to brush reality aside to fit the conclusion he wants. Lebow doesn't come up with reasoned arguments in support of his proffered counterfactuals so much as he simply asserts that his preferred outcome is the most reasonable one and then forges ahead blithely dismissing that there could be counterarguments in an off-hand manner. Between Lebow's wildly optimistic faith in the reasonableness of nations and his raw assertions of how events would play out, the book feels more like a wish-list of fantasies rather than an evaluation of what might happen had history been different.

I don't mean to suggest that all of Lebow's predicted changes are ill-supported: So long as he is dealing with the broad strokes of history he seems to be on reasonably solid ground. Had World War I never happened, the Versailles Treaty would have never happened, which makes World War II less likely. Without World War I, the Russian Revolution would have been far less likely, meaning the Soviet Union would likely not have existed, and the Cold War would have not taken place. And so on. But these sorts of observations are trivial, and even banal, and not the sort of thing that one could build a book upon.

Lebow could have chosen to fill out his book in one of two ways. He could have, for example, focused on the impact of Franz Ferdinand himself, given that in the alternate worlds he envisioned, Ferdinand lives past 1914. Lebow does this to some extent, but it is an altogether one sided analysis - in Lebow's view Ferdinand would have been a liberalizing influence had he survived to become Emperor of the dual monarchy, a position backed up by Ferdinand's historical writings. But the problem is that Lebow doesn't even seem to consider the possibility that Ferdinand would behave differently if he actually ascended to power. History is replete with examples of men who were advocates of political liberalization while they sat on the outside of the corridors of power, but became staunch supporters of the status quo once they were ensconced on the throne. Lebow could have evaluated the differences that would have resulted depending upon which direction Ferdinand took, and provided an interesting analysis of the differences that would result. But Lebow doesn't do that. In both of his proffered scenarios, Ferdinand is a liberal influence, and in both of his proffered scenarios Austro-Hungary offers greater autonomy to the various national groups under its banner.

Instead, Lebow fills up the pages of his book with nearly endless, mind-numbingly tedious detail. But this detail is not only exhausting and dreary, it is often also complete unsupported by anything other than Lebow's assertion that the world would be as he envisions it. For example, in his description of the alternate life of Egon Schiele (who died in the influenza epidemic of 1918 along with his wife, and whose work was considered so pornographic that a judge in a trial burned one of Schiele's erotic drawings), Lebow states:

"He responds well to fatherhood and begins a series of paintings of his son. They are initially similar to his paintings of adult nudes: contorted, outlined figures composed of pale, sometimes sickly, flesh tones, accented with res and blues that suggest erotic potential but severe alienation. Gradually his portraits of his son, and to some extent those of other people, become less angular and show more of an inner light, heightening the tension between the human potential and the social situation."

But this isn't a conclusion that is based upon anything more than wishful thinking. There isn't anything in Schiele's life that would suggest that his art would have developed in the direction Lebow confidently asserts that it would. Lebow isn't taking reality, changing an element, and then projecting what consequences would flow from the change. Instead, he is simply indulging in wild speculation without even so much as a cursory nod to actual history. Time and again, Lebow makes very detailed, but almost completely unsupported, and often implausible claims as to the course history would take. Physicists would demand, and be able to enforce, in an international accord to limit the development of nuclear weapons. Humphrey Bogart would become a well-regarded Shakespearean stage actor, but would get involved in the farm labor movement in California, resulting in his getting roughed up by anti-union thugs. Richard Nixon would become a televangelist instead of a politician, but his preaching career would play out almost exactly like his actual political career did. And on and on and on and on.

And on. Most of the book is taken up by these sorts of descriptions. Lebow seems to have taken the position that if two or three representative examples would be good, ten or fifteen would be that much better. So instead of describing the alternate lives of one or two jazz musicians, Lebow gives long and convoluted descriptions of the alternate world careers of almost a dozen. And, as long-winded as these descriptions seem, they amount to nothing more than a collection of flat assertions: Duke Ellington would abandon the Jim Crow South for Britain, play shows there, work with Cole Porter, get praise from Igor Stravinsky, get knighted by the British monarch, and share a Nobel Peace Prize with Louis Armstrong. This seems like a moderately interesting scenario, but this is pretty much all Lebow tells us about it, and all the justification he gives for it as well. But Lebow doesn't bother to explain what Ellington might have done other than move to Europe that would have resulted in a Nobel Prize. Nor does Lebow explain why Armstrong shared the honor with Ellington. It seems easy to believe that the fictional Ellington and Armstrong would be brilliant musicians, as they clearly were in the real world, but Lebow doesn't bother to give any explanation for why he thought they would earn a Nobel Prize in the fictional world. And the problem is that the book is, for the most part, these skeletal fictional biographies, repeated ad nauseum. Filled with prolonged skeletal descriptions of the lives of various noteworthies, the book reads like a highlight catalogue without the substance that would give the entries any significance.

Lebow does present two alternate visions of a world in which World War I never took place: The first is a "better" world where peace breaks out with art, music, and flowers for everyone, and the second is a "worse" world that ends with a limited nuclear exchange between Britain and Germany in the 1970s. But these aren't explorations extrapolating what might happen if World War I had never happened. They are wild flights of fantasy that start with the counterfactual hypothesis that World War I was avoided, and then run off in unsupported directions racing past the line of "extrapolation" and into "self-indulgent daydreams". This sort of unrestrained speculation might support a fictional work, especially if it were fleshed out from the bare bones presentation Lebow provides, but it is entirely unsatisfying when one is expected to take it seriously as an academic evaluation of possible alternative history.

Even in Lebow's "better" world he avers that some things would be worse than in our actual world. Without the impetus provided by two world wars and a cold war, technological development in the "better" world lags. But more troublingly, in the "better" world, colonialism persists much longer, antisemitism is pervasive throughout Europe and the United States, and both racism and sexism remain dominant and unchecked forces for far longer. All of these problems are simply hand-waved away by Lebow with little more than a shrug. It seems that a world is "better" in Lebow's estimation, so long as it is better for white male Christians.

Overall, Franz Ferdinand Lives! is both overly long and tedious, and yet much too short. The predictions that the author makes are mostly obvious and banal, and are leavened with tiresomely detailed skeletons of biographies that lack the muscle that would give them any kind of life. On the whole, this book feels more like an outline for a fictional book of alternate history rather than an actual book in itself. This isn't so much a bad book, as it is merely an unconvincing and forgettable one.

Monday, June 9, 2014

The Doubleclicks' new CD Dimetrodon will be released tomorrow, on June 10, 2014. I already have a copy of this CD because I backed them on Kickstarter at a sufficiently significant level. On the other hand, I am of the opinion that had the internet been created solely as a platform for Angela and Aubrey to distribute their music, it would have been a worthwhile investment. This means that I understand that some of you out there may not have already gotten the CD, and may have failed to pre-order it. This is your opportunity to correct this error, because you still have one day left to do so. Or you could wait until tomorrow and buy a copy.

For those of you who insist on dawdling, you're going to need something to do while you wait. The obvious solution is to listen to The Doubleclicks' song Cats and Netflix. The song is actually about finding things to do to while away the months of autumn in the Pacific Northwest, but given that there are many hours to wait until you can actually get your hands upon one of the coveted copies of Dimetrodon, and when waiting for music from these two sisters, hours can seem like days.1 So having plenty of things to do in order to fill all of that time waiting for new Doubleclicks music is a critical need.

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.

This week Elizabeth of Silver's reviews asks (via Billy): When you view someone's profile, what information do you like to see?

I look at people's online profiles so rarely that I don't really have things that I look for. I appreciate it when a profile is helpful. For example, if your profile includes the URL of your blog or blogs. Or if you have preferred contact method. Or if you have other projects like a podcast or a vlog, and if you do, where to find them. Including these pieces of information in your profile makes it much more likely that I will go and check out your work.

There are a couple of things that I regard as red flags - generally up front assertions of certain political, religious, other ideological allegiances are indicators of people whom I should avoid.

It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.

Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.

Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".

If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.

If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!

If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: What are your non-book guilty pleasures? Like TV shows, food, websites, hobbies, etc.

I don't really have any guilty pleasures, since you have to feel guilty about liking something for it to be a "guilty" pleasure, and I refuse to feel guilty about any of my interests or hobbies. For example, I like games, but I don't see that as a "guilty" pleasure. I like playing computer games, board games, and role-playing games. I even have a role-playing blog titled Playing in Other Worlds. Anyone who has a problem with my being a gamer is someone I'm just not going to bother with, and so even though this is the sort of interest that is often described as "guilty" pleasure, I just don't see the world that way.

As to things I enjoy other than books, movies and television would have to be on the list, but a specific selection of movies and television. My bent with books is towards science fiction and fantasy, and so is my interest in movies and television. I have reviewed some movies and television episodes already on this blog, and I intend to review more. For a science fiction and fantasy fan to be interested in science fiction and fantasy movies and television shows really shouldn't be that surprising. I do have other, more obscure interests, for example, my blog where I review drinks titled Soda Trek, but to list them all would take a while.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Readers of this blog may have noticed that over the last week or so the Amazon affiliate links have been disappearing. Or, more likely, no one noticed, since no one ever seems to have used them during the three or so years that they existed. Either way, the fact remains that I spent several days going through the hundreds of pages that contained Amazon affiliate links and manually removing any of them that I could find. I think that I have gotten to all of them, but I may have missed one or two on some of them more obscure pages. If they are out there, I'll find them in the near future and get rid of them too.

This, of course, raises the question why I would spend time doing this. I have a couple of reasons, the first of which is that no one ever seemed to use them, making them something of a waste of page space. Advertising, and Amazon affiliate links certainly are advertising, that doesn't work is simply not worth bothering with. Although it is not the point of writing this blog, and I certainly won't stop writing it if I can't, but I'd like to earn some revenue from this blog. And quite frankly, Amazon links that no one clicks on are simply so much useless clutter.1

I also removed the Amazon links because of their current feud with Hachette. Despite many efforts by Amazon apologists to portray this dispute as merely the rough and tumble of business negotiations between equals, this is simply not the case. Amazon controls roughly thirty percent of the retail book trade in the United States, although I've seen some estimates that place Amazon's market share at closer to forty percent. Amazon controls more than sixty percent of the e-book trade. By any of the standard measures used to determine monopoly (or monopsony) power, Amazon clearly has such power. And, in the United States at least, an organization with such power is not treated as a regular participant in the market, which means that Amazon's hardball tactics, at least in my opinion, are probably illegal.

I have seen some people argue that because the U.S. department of Justice brought an action against Hachette, Apple, and several other publishers claiming that their attempt to enforce an "agency" model for e-book distribution was impermissible collusion, that therefore Hachette is a bad actor and deserves whatever it gets in return. To this I have two responses. First, the antitrust action against Hachette was never concluded - Hachette and the other corporations targeted by the suit all agreed to settle without admitting liability. Second, whether Hachette may have participated in a cartel to deal with Amazon has no bearing on whether Amazon itself is behaving in a manner that violated the antitrust laws of the United States.

I have always been a little uncomfortable with having the Amazon affiliate links because I have never been particularly fond of Amazon's business practices. The reports of the low pay and intentionally impossible to meet standards at their fulfillment warehouses, their nigh-predatory pricing intended to drive local book stores out of business ( an intention that has largely been fulfilled), their insistence that they should not pay sales taxes like every other business does, and various other actions make them a less than savory business partner. Granted, many of the companies in the market are less than savory as business partners, but most of them are constrained by their competition in a way that Amazon appears not to be.

As an aside, I have seen it claimed that because the various major publishers use very similar contracts when dealing with authors, this is evidence of a lack of competition. This conclusion displays a lack of understanding of basic economics. When there is strong competition, one would expect business practices to converge towards a similar end point. From an economic standpoint, the similarity of the contracts used by the "Big 5" is evidence in favor of the conclusion that they are in fierce competition with one another. In contrast, the very different terms offered by Amazon constitutes substantial evidence in favor of the conclusion that Amazon has significant market power.

Also, I read an article the other day that posited that the reason Amazon has such a dominant market share is due to affiliate links, because that encourages people to lazily purchase through Amazon when they visit a blog or website that has them. That doesn't seem to be supported by my admittedly anecdotal experience with having such links, as no one used them even once during the couple of years that they were active. I have seen some commentary from other blogs also noting that no one ever buys anything through their Amazon affiliate links either. Although this is just a pile of anecdotes, it does seem to suggest that the links might not be as valuable as one might expect.

But the real issue is that the Amazon affiliate links were essentially dead space on this blog. The Amazon-Hachette dispute served as a catalyst to motivate me to do something I had been vaguely planning on doing for a while, but it was only the proximate cause, not the root cause. I'm looking into replacing the Amazon links with something else, but that's on the back burner right now as I have several other projects on the blog that need attention. But for now, I've disentangled my product from Amazon, and I am unlikely to do so again.

1 I actually stopped putting links on new posts a few months ago when Amazon changed the code used for the links from using iframes to using scripts. This change didn't alter the appearance of the links, but it did make it much more difficult to integrate them into the body of a post without causing formatting issues.

Monday, June 2, 2014

Anyone who reads this blog is probably well-aware of how much I love the Doubleclicks. And it should come as no surprise that I am a fan of Dr. Who - and by Dr. Who, I mean all of Dr. Who, extending back to the days of Troughton, Pertwee, and Baker, up to Eccleston and Tennant, making me one of those odd people who is a fan of both "Classic Who" and "New Who". I will; however, admit to a slight partiality for Classic Who. Anyway, when the Doubleclicks released their version of the Dr. Who Theme, it was like the marriage between two of the things I love that merged together and resulted in one minute and forty-nine seconds of perfection. I should point out that, in this case, then I say "The Doubleclicks", I really mean Aubrey, since the performance is entirely her and her cello.

The online concert that Angela talks about in the portion of the video after Aubrey is done covering the Dr. Who theme song has already happened, but Aubrey and Angela were nice enough to keep all of it available on YouTube. You can see it in its entirety at this link if you want, but you obviously won't be able to send them live comments or otherwise contribute.

One thing that is still ongoing is Catherine Asaro's Kickstarter campaign to raise money for an audio book version of her anthology Aurora in Four Voices, which contains several stories set in the aforementioned Saga of the Skolian Empire. The anthology collects several of Asaro's novellas and short stories into one volume, including the Hugo- and Nebula-nominated story Aurora in Four Voices and the Nebula-winning story The Spacetime Pool. If you are interested in contributing, you can find the Kickstarter at this link.

All writing that appears on this blog is copyrighted to Aaron Pound and may not be reproduced without permission. Any elements that appear that are not copyrighted to me are used for criticism or commentary pursuant to the provisions of 17 U.S.C. § 170.